[Ill.u.s.tration: Mrs. Jerry took the senorita's hand and smiled up at her.]

"Santa Maria! that must be true. She shall come and let my mother be her friend also. I will send a carriage, or if she can ride--ask the big senor if he has no horses!"

Jack it was who took up right willingly the burden of translation, for the pure pleasure of repeating the senorita's words and doing her a service; and Dade dropped back beside the don, where he thought he belonged, and stayed there.

"Wall, I ain't got any horses, but I got two of the derndest mules you ever seen, mister. Moll and Poll's good as any mustang in this valley.

Mary and me can ride 'em anywheres; that's why I brung 'em along, to ride in case we had to eat the cattle."

"Then they must surely ride Moll and Poll to visit my mother!" the senorita declared with her customary decisiveness. "Padre mio!"

Obediently the don accepted the responsibility laid upon him by his sole-born who ruled him without question, and made official the invitation. It was not what he had expected to do; he was not quite sure that it was what he wanted to do; but he did it, and did it with the courtliness which would have flowered his invitation to the governor to honor his poor household by his presence; he did it because his daughter had glanced at him and said "My father?" in a certain tone which he knew well.

Something else was done, which no one had expected to do when the four galloped up to the trespa.s.sers. Jack and Dade dismounted and helped Jerry unload the logs from the wagon, for one thing; while Teresita inspected Mrs. Jerry's ingenious domestic makeshifts and managed somehow, with Mrs. Jerry's help, to make the bond of mutual liking serve very well in the place of intelligible speech. For another, the don fairly committed himself to the promise of a peon or two to help in the further devastation of the trees upon the Picardo mountain slope behind the little, natural meadow, which Jerry Simpson had so calmly appropriated to his own use.

"He is honest," Don Andres a.s.serted more than once on the ride home, perhaps in self-justification for his soft dealing. "He is honest; and when he sees that the land is mine, he will pay; or if he does not pay, he will go--and tilled acres and a cabin will not harm me.

Valencia, if he marries the daughter of Carlos (as the senora says will come to pa.s.s), will be glad to have a cabin to live in apart from the mother of his wife, who is a shrew and will be disquieting in any man's household. Therefore, Senor Hunter, you may order the peons to a.s.sist the big hombre and his beautiful senora, that they may soon have a hut to shelter them from the rains. It is not good to see so gentle a woman endure hardship within my boundary. Many tules, they will need," he added after a minute, "and it is unlikely that the Senor Seem'son understands the making of a thatch. Diego and Juan are skillful; and the tules they lay upon a roof will let no drop of rain fall within the room. Order them to a.s.sist."

"I shall tell Margarita to bake many little cakes," cried Teresita, riding up between her father and Dade, that she might a.s.sist in the planning. "And madre mia will give me coffee and sugar for the pretty senora. So soft is her voice, like one of my pigeons! And her hair is more beautiful than the golden hair of our Blessed Lady at Dolores.

Oh, if the Blessed Virgin would make me as beautiful as she, and as gentle, I should--I should finish the altar cloth immediately, which I began two years ago!"

"Thou art well enough as thou art," comforted her father, trying to hide his pride in her under frowning brows, and to sterilize the praise with a tone of belittlement.

"I love that pretty senora," sighed Teresita, turning in the saddle to glance wistfully back at the meager little camp. "She shall have the black puppy Rosa gave me when last I was at the Mission San Jose. But I hope," she added plaintively, like the child she was at heart, "she will make that big, ugly beast they called Tige be kind to her; and the milk must be warm to the finger when Chico is fed. To-night, Senor Allen, you shall teach me Americano words that I may say to the senora what is necessary, for the happiness of my black puppy. I must learn to say that her name is Chico, and that the milk must be warm to the finger, and that the big dog must be kind."

CHAPTER XI

AN ILL WIND

A wind rose in the night, blowing straight out of the north; a wind so chill that the senora unpacked extra blankets and distributed them lavishly amongst the beds of her household, and the oldest peon at the hacienda (who was Gustavo and a prophet more infallible than Elijah) stared into the heavens until his neck went lame; and predicted much cold, so that the frost would surely kill the fruit blossoms on the slope behind the house; and after that much rain.

Don Andres, believing him implicitly, repeated the warning to Dade; and Dade, because that was now his business, rode here and there, giving orders to the peons and making sure that all would be snug when the storm broke.

The Senorita Teresa, bethinking her of the "pretty senora" who would have scant shelter in that canvas-topped wagon-box, even though it had been set under the thickest branches of a great live oak, called guardedly to Diego who was pa.s.sing, and ordered Tejon, her swiftest little mustang, saddled and held ready for her behind the last hut, where it could not be seen from the house.

Tejon, so named by his mistress because he was gray like a badger, hated wind, which the senorita knew well. Also, when the hatred grew into rebellion, it needed a strong hand indeed to control him, if the mood seized him to run. But the senorita was in a perverse mood, and none but Tejon would she ride; even though--or perhaps because--she knew that his temper would be uncertain.

She wanted to beg the pretty Senora Simpson to come and stay with them until the weather cleared and the cabin was finished. But more than that she wanted to punish Senor Jack Allen for laughing when she tried to speak the Americano sentence he had taught her the night before, and got it all backwards. Senor Jack would be frightened, perhaps, when he learned that she had ridden away alone upon Tejon; he would ride after her--perhaps. And she would not talk to him when he found her, but would be absolutely implacable in her displeasure, so that he would be speedily reduced to the most abject humility.

Diego, when she ran stealthily across the patio, her riding-habit flapping about her feet in the wind, looked at her uneasily as if he would like to remonstrate; but being a mere peon, he bent silently and held his calloused, brown palm for the senorita's foot; reverently straightened the flapping skirt when she was mounted, and sent a hasty prayer to whatever saint might be counted upon to watch most carefully over a foolish little Spanish girl.

"An evil spirit is in the caballo to-day," Diego finally ventured to inform his mistress gravely. "For a week he has not felt the weight of saddle, and he loves not the trees which sway and sing, or the wind whistling in his ears."

"And for that he pleases me much," retorted the senorita, and touched Tejon with her spurred heel, so that he came near upsetting Diego with the lunge he gave.

When the peon recovered his balance, he stood braced against the wind, and with both hands held his hat upon his head while he watched her flying down the slope and out of sight amongst the trees. No girl in all the valley rode better than the Senorita Teresa Picardo, and Diego knew it well and boasted of it to the peons of other hacendados; but for all that he was ill-at-ease, and when, ten minutes later, he came upon Valencia at the stable, he told him of the madness of the senorita.

"Tejon she would ride, and none other; and to-day he is a devil. Twice he would have bitten my shoulder while I was saddling, and that is the sign that his heart is full of wickedness. Me, I would have put the freno Chilene (Chilian bit) in his mouth--but that would start him bucking; for he hates it because then he cannot run."

Valencia, a little later, met the new majordomo and repeated what Diego had said; and Dade, catching a little of the uneasiness and yet not wanting to frighten the girl's father with the tale, made it his immediate business to find Jack and tell him that Teresita had ridden away alone upon a horse that neither Diego nor Valencia considered safe.

Jack, at first declaring that he wouldn't go where he plainly was not wanted, at the end of an uncomfortable half-hour borrowed Surry, because he was fleet as any mustang in the valley, and rode after her.

In this wise did circ.u.mstances and Jack obey the piqued desire of the senorita.

After the first headlong half mile, Tejon became the perfect little saddle-pony which fair weather found him; and Teresita, cheated of her battle of wills and yet too honest to provoke him deliberately, began to think a little less of her own whims and more of the Senora Simpson, housed miserably beneath the canvas covering of the prairie schooner.

She found Mrs. Jerry sitting inside, with a patchwork quilt over her shoulders, her eyes holding a shade more of wistfulness and less twinkle, perhaps, but with her lips quite ready to smile upon her visitor. Teresita sat down upon a box and curiously watched the pretty senora try to make a small, triangular piece of cloth cover a large, irregular hole in the elbow of the big senor's coat sleeve. Sometimes, when she turned it so, the hole was nearly covered--except that there was the frayed rent at the bottom still grinning maliciously up at the mender.

"'Patch beside patch is neighborly, but patch upon patch is beggarly!'" quoted Mrs. Jerry, at the moment forgetting that the girl could not understand.

Whereupon Teresita bethought her of her last night's lesson, and replied slowly and solemnly: "My dear Mrs. Seem'son, how--do--you--_do_?"

"Mrs. Seem'son," realizing the underlying friendliness of the carefully enunciated greeting, flushed with pleasure and for a minute forgot all about the patch problem.

"Why, honey, you've been learnin' English jest so's you can talk to me!" She leaned and kissed the girl where the red blood of youth dyed brightest the Latin duskiness of the cheek. "I wish't you could say some more. Can't you?"

Teresita could; but her further store of American words related chiefly to the diet and general well-being of one very small and very black pup, which was at that moment sleeping luxuriously in the chimney corner at home; and without the pup the words would be no more than parrot-chattering. So the senorita shook her head and smiled, and Mrs. Jerry went back to the problem of the small patch and the large hole.

Hampered thus by having no common language between them, Teresita failed absolutely to accomplish her mission.

Mrs. Jerry, hazily guessing at the invitation without realizing any urgent need of immediate acceptance, shook her head and pointed to her pitifully few household appurtenances, and tried to make it plain that she had duties which kept her there in the little camp which she pathetically called home.

Teresita gathered that the pretty senora did not wish to leave that great, gaunt hombre who was her husband. So, when she could no longer conceal her shiverings, and having no hope that the big senor would understand her any better when he returned with the load of logs he and the peons were after, she rose and prepared to depart. Surely the Senor Jack, if he were going to follow, would by this time be coming, and the hope rather hastened her adieu.

"Adios, amiga mia," she said, her eyes innocently turning from the Senora Simpson to scan stealthily the northern slope.

"Good-by, honey. Come again and see me. Jerry knows a few Spanish words, and I'll make him learn 'em to me so I can talk a little of your kind, next time. And tell your mother I'm obliged for the wine; and them dried peaches tasted fine, after being without so long.

Shan't I hold your horse while you git on? Seems to me he's pretty frisky for a girl to be riding; but I guess you're equal to him!"

Teresita smiled vaguely. She had no idea of what the woman was saying, and she was beginning to wish that she had not tried in just this way to punish the Senor Jack; if he were here now, he could make the Senora Simpson understand that the storm would be a very dreadful one--else Gustavo was a liar, and whom should one believe?

Even while she was coaxing Tejon alongside a log and persuading him to stand so until she was in the saddle, she was generously forswearing Senor Jack's punishment that she might serve the pretty senora who had Tejon by the bit and was talking to him softly in words he had never heard before in his life. She resolved that if she met Senor Jack, she would ask him to come back with her and explain to the senora about the cold and the rain, and urge her to accept the hospitality of her neighbors.

For that reason she looked more anxiously than before for some sign of him riding towards her through the fields of flowering mustard that heaved in the wind like the waves on some strange, lemon-colored sea tossing between high, green islands of oak and willow. Surely that fool Diego would never keep the still tongue! He would tell, when some one missed her. If he did not, or if Senor Allen was an obstinate pig of a man and would not come, then she would tell Senor Hunter, who was always so kind, though not so handsome as the other, perhaps.

Senor Hunter's eyes were brown--and she had looked into brown eyes all her life. But the blue! The blue eyes that could so quickly change lighter or darker that they bewildered one; and could smile, or light flames that could wither the soul of one.

Even the best rider among the Spanish girls as far south as Paso Robles should not meditate so deeply upon the color of a senor's eyes that she forgets the horse she is riding, especially when the horse is Tejon, whose heart is full of wickedness.

A coyote, stalking the new-made nest of a quail, leaped out of the mustard and gave Tejon the excuse he wanted, and the dreaming senorita was nearly unseated when he ducked and whirled in his tracks. He ran, and she could not stop him, pull hard as she might. If he had only run towards home! But instead, he ran down the valley, because then he need not face the wind; and he tried to outstrip the wind as he went.

It was when they topped a low knoll and darted under the wide, writhing branches of a live oak, that Jack glimpsed them and gave chase; and his heart forgot to beat until he saw them in the open beyond, and knew that she had not been swept from the saddle by a low branch. He leaned lower over Surry's neck and felt gratefully the instant response of the horse; he had thought that Surry was running his best on such uneven ground; but even a horse may call up an unsuspected reserve of speed or endurance, if his whole heart is given to the service of his master; there was a perceptible quickening and a lengthening of stride, and Jack knew then that Surry could do no more and keep his feet. Indeed, if he held that pace for long without stumbling, he would prove himself a more remarkable horse than even Dade declared him to be.

He hoped to overtake the girl soon, for in the glimpses he got of her now and then, as she flew across an open s.p.a.ce, he saw that she was putting her whole weight upon the reins; and that should make a sufficient handicap to the gray to wipe out the three-hundred-yard distance between them. It did not seem possible that Tejon could be running as fast as Surry; and yet, after a half-mile or so of that killing pace, Jack could not see that he was gaining much. Perhaps it was his anxiety to overtake her that made the chase seem interminable; for presently they emerged upon the highway which led south to Santa Clara and so on down the valley, and he saw, on a straight, open stretch, that he was much nearer; so near he could see that her hair was down and blowing about her face in a way that must have blinded her at times.